Although not as well-known as other prominent families such as the Medici, Visconti, or Borgia, the Malatesta of Rimini, especially during the leadership of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (1417-1468), occupy a central position in the history of the Italian Renaissance. Gifted with great military skill and a profound sensibility for the arts, the “wolf of Rimini” became the epitome of the “man” of the Renaissance.

The great Swiss historian Jakob Burckhardt, in his influential The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, considered him a “whole man,” the crowning figure among “the furtherers of humanism,” a condottiereequally capable in war and art, unscrupulous, cruel, and yet refined, in other words the perfect example of the new man capable of changing the course of civilization, and of ushering in the age of modernity.